Mark, on the last pass of AO-16 (I would say approximately 21:30 UTC over EL95), the bird was nice and strong, and there weren't any signals on there, with the exception of some QRM south of the border. The bird was traveling north from the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico area.
I was calling CQ, but no one was coming back to me, until the footprint was over the USA. Then Rick, WA4NVM came back to me. I said hello and did the usual exchange. When he came back to me, all I heard was heavy distortion. I wasn't sure if it was him. I waited for a few seconds and didn't hear anything, so I transmitted and asked him if he had heard me - my downlink sounded fine. Again I heard the heavy distortion, and once again, I keyed up and said that if it was him, that he was very distorted. Once again, my downlink was clear, but then it started to get distorted, to the point where it was unintelligible.
Towards the end of the pass, the distortion went away, and I called him when I was down to about 3 degrees, and he said that yes it was him, and he couldn't figure out what was going on, that he had lowered and increased his power, but there was still distortion. I replied to him and all was well until LOS.
I have a sad feeling the end is near.
73 de W4AS Sebastian
On Dec 3, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Mark L. Hammond wrote:
Hello All,
As expected, over the last few days AO-16 has started to again experience "shutdowns". Thanks to your updates at the very handy webpage at http://oscar.dcarr.org/ it seems that the first shutdown occurred between 28 Nov 2008 2030 UTC and 29 Nov 2008 0615 UTC.
So far I've restarted the bird three times, and each time it appears to stay up for a day or more. We can expect the situation to worsen, as the eclipse periods get longer and the satellite temperatures continue to go down. We've been warning you :) Get those AO-16 contacts in now!
I'll try to restart AO-16 as my schedule allows. Your reports to the OSCAR Satellite Status page by KD5QGR are very helpful; it helps me know when the bird is down so that I can do my best to restart it. Based on the times of the passes lately, it's difficult to be available when the bird is above the horizon.
If the birds is operational in voice mode, you should clearly hear the "not-so-repressed carrier" on the downlink. Special request--if you do not hear the carrier, please do not transmit to AO-16, as your transmissions make it difficult to command the satellite. And, if you hear the "hummmming" of the PSK transmitting, again please do not attempt to transmit to the bird; it's likely that I have restarted the bird and need to collect telemetry before configuring it into voice mode.
Thanks to all you faithful AO-16 operators!
Current operational mode for AO-16 (as available!):
Mode FM Voice Repeater ( Downlink is DSB) Uplink : 145.9200 MHz FM Downlink 437.0260 MHz SSB
73,
Mark L. Hammond [N8MH] AO-16 Command Station